“But she broke down afterward, poor darling!” said Lady Blount.
Herold tried to question Stella on the subject, but met with no response.
“Let us talk of pleasant things,” she pleaded.
He went away sorrowful, knowing the conflict in her soul—knowing, too, that the strong soul has to fight its battles unaided.
Meanwhile Stella put on a smiling face to the world,—for, after all, the world smiled on her,—and she was gentle with Sir Oliver and Lady Blount. She mingled in such social life as the neighbourhood afforded—a luncheon party, a garden party, where young men fell at her feet in polite adoration, and young women put their arms round her waist and talked to her of hats. She liked them all well enough, but shyly evaded intimacy. They belonged to a race of beings with whom she was unfamiliar, having passed their lives in a different spiritual sphere. They frightened her ever so little; why, she did not know, for her unused power of self-analysis was not sufficiently strong to enable her to realize the instinctive shrinking from those, strangers to her, who had been drenched from childhood in the mysterious and dreadful knowledge of evil. She met them only on the common ground of youth and talked of superficial things, fearing to inquire more deeply into their thoughts and lives.
“I love to see her enjoying herself,” said Lady Blount.
Sir Oliver rubbed his hands, and agreed for once with his wife.
“There's nothing like a little harmless gaiety for a girl,” said he. “She has been shut up with us old fogies too long.”
“She's beginning to realize now,” said Lady Blount, “the happiness that lies before her in the new condition of things.”
ONE day when Stella was returning, unattended, from a small shopping excursion in the village, a thin-lipped woman in black crossed the road just before the turn that led to the gate to the Channel House and accosted her.